What Rogan and Ukraine have in Common
James Kirchick on the Danger of Vital Institutions Losing the Public’s Trust
What do Joe Rogan and Ukraine have in common? Both have become victims of distinct yet related mainstream media monomanias.
In recent weeks, the world’s most influential influencer has come under fire from “the blue stack,” the term Zaid Jilani used in this space to describe the interconnected complex of institutions—“progressive nonprofits, large portions of the news media, woke corporations, Democrats in government”—pushing for “ideological conformity across American life.” Initially, Rogan’s heresy against this ruling caste was his promotion of anti-vaccine “misinformation,” a thought crime he perpetrated by dint of inviting prominent vaccine skeptics onto his show for his characteristically discursive questioning and banter. This was a serious enough offense to draw the attention of the White House, which added its voice to the chorus of 1960s musicians calling upon Spotify to rid itself of its turbulent podcaster.
When that effort to de-platform Rogan failed, the blue stack turned to a slickly produced video (later discovered to have been promoted into pseudo-virality by a Democratic Party messaging firm with a history of manufacturing outrages) depicting him repeatedly uttering (but not employing) a talismanic racial slur. “Joe Rogan’s use of the n-word is another January 6 moment,” declared an article on the CNN homepage, merging two of the three “narrative delusions of the Trump era”—racial panic and fears of a fascist takeover—which I identified last year.
It is the third delusion—the baroque assortment of genuinely worrisome facts, manipulative half-truths, and deranged conspiracy theories collectively known by the shorthand “Russiagate”—that illuminates the similarity between Rogan and Ukraine. As I write this, the world watches with trepidation to see what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do with the more than 100,000 troops he has amassed along the borders of Ukraine, a country he has been violently tormenting since 2014, when he annexed the Crimean peninsula. The Biden administration has loudly warned that Russia will launch a full-scale invasion, in expectation of which it has evacuated all but a handful of U.S. embassy staff from Kyiv and urged American citizens to leave the country.
The Clinton-campaign-directed machinations to undermine the democratic legitimacy of Donald Trump should have no impact on how Americans understand their country’s foreign policy toward Ukraine. And yet they have become impossibly entangled. We now know that a technology company executive who had worked for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign “exploited” access to Trump White House computer data in order to create a narrative linking the former president to Russia—the latest charge to emerge from Special Counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian election interference. But we are only beginning to see the full consequences of the revelations, which extend far beyond the results of 2016, because, unfortunately, when an institution surrenders its credibility—whether it be a major media outlet or a government intelligence agency—to forward a political agenda, it will lose the trust of the people. It’s a story as old as the boy who cried wolf.
Consider State Department spokesman Ned Price’s warning at a press briefing earlier this month that Russia might create a pretext for invasion by disseminating video of a fabricated Ukrainian attack on Russian-speaking civilians. The charge was entirely plausible given Moscow’s century-long history of dezinformatsiya (disinformation) and maskirovka (deception), but it was treated by many observers as if it were ridiculous on its face because the State Department no longer has enough public trust to be believed as matter of course—even when its claims are credible.
For another example of this dynamic at work, and one that joins the fate of the beleaguered podcaster with that of the imperiled Eastern European country, take a look at this short clip from a recent Rogan interview with a libertarian comic named Dave Smith. Rogan listens sympathetically as Smith explains why the corporate media is out to destroy him. Who are these people to denounce your credibility, Smith says, pointing to a string of mainstream media failures, including the widely hyped story, leaked during the height of the 2020 campaign and later discredited, that the Russian government had put bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan. So far, so good. But then Smith rips into the same “corporate media” for “pushing this war propaganda between Russia and Ukraine,” as if predator and prey are equally at fault for the catastrophe that may yet unfold, as well as for the “big fat lie” that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people, which he absolutely did.
Many if not most Rogan fans, who are understandably frustrated if not downright disgusted at the dishonest tactics employed by those trying to cancel him, will probably find this line of argument persuasive. The mainstream media and America’s intelligence agencies have done much to damage their credibility in recent years. But that does not somehow absolve Russia from threatening Ukraine and the entire post-World War II European security order, something which ought to concern all Americans regardless of their party affiliation or ideological preference.
Fans of Joe Rogan need not worry. Their man will be just fine even if Spotify decides one day that his brand of irreverence isn’t worth the tsurris. Ukraine, alas, enjoys no such comfort.
James Kirchick is a Tablet columnist and the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (Henry Holt, 2022). He tweets @jkirchick.